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Review of Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans by Jeffrey A. Brown

Brown, Jeffrey A. Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (Studies in Popular Culture). Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

In his 2001 survey of black superhero comics and the ecosystem in
which they (sometimes) survive, Jeffrey Brown names his ideological
project up front; quoting the mother of an avid comics reader, he ends
his prologue, "'It's about time we got some new heroes around here.'
New heroes, indeed" (xv). Brown wants to situate Milestone Media, a
black-owned comic-book publishing company emphasizing "cultural
diversity" (33), as a source of positive identification for the black
adolescent and preadolescent boys who make up most of its
readership. Black Superheroes begins by sketching the
history of Milestone, its major series, and its media milieu; from
there, Brown moves into a detailed overview of the world of comics
fandom generally.

The center of Brown's book – literally and figuratively – is the
chapter in which he profiles a handful of serious Milestone fans and
quotes extensively from his interviews with them. He uses the boys'
comments as a springboard for three analytical approaches: one
examining race and gender, one examining masculinity, and a final
chapter in which he reviews the "principle[s] of interpretation" (191)
by which fans read, understand, and value comics texts. His key point,
made clearest in this final section, is that comics readers construct
meaning with reference to a complex matrix of "intertextual
information shared with, and about, the creators themselves" (191) –
information which includes the superhero books' perceived artistic
merit as well as their relation to the conditions of their production,
to mainstream comics, to other black-oriented materials, even to the
"blaxploitation" images to which they sometimes allude. For Brown,
this intertextuality suggests that comic book fans are neither
passively receiving nor actively resisting the texts they read;
instead, the fans "work in cooperation" (12) with the producers of the
texts to negotiate new variations on existing archetypes.

Black Superheroes provides a surprisingly
comprehensive introduction to the comics world, as well as a primer of
sorts for the cultural studies approach to texts. Brown discourses at
length on fandom and convention culture, mainstream attitudes toward
comics consumption, and contemporary trends in the field, with
frequent reference to the work of critics like Janice Radway and
Martin Barker. These passages will prove especially useful to new
comics readers from the fields of cultural studies, children's
literature, or African-American studies. Brown writes simply and
pleasantly, without resort to excessive jargon or abstraction. He
cheerfully devotes nearly two pages to explaining the visual
conventions at work in a single page of the flagship Milestone comic
Icon: "The depiction of Hardware's spoken words in panel
2 – 'Dobie? Initiate flow gun assembly' – is visually represented in
a box which at first glance appears very similar to the box containing
the character's internal thoughts; but it is distinguished by the
convention of the box's frame, which has rounded edges and a jagged
point that indicates the source of the voice" (143). Unfortunately,
Brown tends toward exposition rather than analysis, so that the
overall effect in the early sections is that of a research paper,
disappointingly limited in argument. He summarizes vital debates on
representations of blackness without contributing much to them.

It is no surprise, then, that the best chapters of the book are
those in which the readers (and Milestone's creators, themselves
lifetime comics fans) speak for themselves. Their idiosyncrasy and
enthusiasm lends the prose the verve that Brown lacks. Brown
attributes his success as an interviewer to "conversation based on
affiliation [...] the way fans speak with each other" (7), and indeed
these chapters sound a great deal like a group of enthusiastic
consumers debating which characters are the most realistic or the most
awesome. In presenting these conversations, Brown lends his readers
the encyclopedic knowledge of context that he claims comics fans draw
on in order to interpret any new book. For instance, the beloved issue
in which the teenaged Milestone hero Static defeats superbaddie
Tarmack might seem to the uninitiated reader to be indistinguishable
from the usual "comic book story about two superpowered, costumed
characters fighting it out" (184). Only by comparison with the
"hypermasculine might-makes-right norm" (183) of other popular books
do this text and others like it emerge as "alternative models" (184)
of manhood. Here and elsewhere, Brown affirms the validity of his
reading with quotations from the boy fans who say they appreciate
Milestone comics explicitly "for what they're not" (179) – in other
words, for their situation within the larger comics ecosystem.

These later chapters, dominated by the voices of the creators and
the fans, are great fun, but Brown is again perhaps too uncritical. He
notes with amusement that fans perceive the geeky fanboy stereotype
"always in those around them, never in themselves" (66) but elsewhere
he wholeheartedly embraces, without further evidence, the boys'
assertions that they like the comics for the "values" they embody
(104), that the books have made them less racist (166), or that they
have become better students as a result of their interest in comics
(107). He neglects to explore the obvious ideological incentives for
members of a marginalized subculture to express themselves in these
terms – perhaps because he finds himself, as a writer about comics,
identifying with their defensive posture. In positing a collaborative
"integration that exists between the fans and the small industry of
professionals" (91), Brown cites only urban legends of fans who became
professional artists or whose comments influenced storylines –
incidents that he admits are probably apocryphal. Brown's most
troubling failure of critical imagination is that he repeats the
Milestone creators' claim that they hope to avoid "preachy" or overtly
political content (32), and in almost the same breath explains that
they aim to "show the quality and diversity of African American life"
(31). We might permit a producer of comic books to insist that his
message of tolerance, multiculturalism, "resisting the lures of gang
life, excelling in school, caring for younger children, developing his
body in the gym, playing wholesome sports, and even helping a little
old lady with her groceries" (185) is somehow universal and
apolitical, but we expect sharper scrutiny from a scholar of popular
culture.

Brown's strongest critical claims – regarding intertextuality and
masculinity, and their relation to race – are all reprised in the
final chapter, "Drawing Conclusions," where they are uncluttered by
the description and summary that characterize the earlier
chapters. Brown's clear prose, his extensive engagement with other
critics, his inclusion of illustrations from the original comics, and
his accessible conclusions make this chapter a useful model for
familiarizing students with the work of cultural studies. (They will
need to disregard the many editing errors that plagued my edition of
the text.) In Brown's very last paragraph, students will find his most
innovative suggestion: that audience studies should focus not only on
how consumers rework texts after their production but also on how they
"may actually be influencing the producers [before and during
production] [...] in other ways that have yet to be explored" (201). As
Brown implies, this exploration does not take place in Black
Superheroes.

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